ChatGPT wants my job. It can’t (and it won’t) have it.

Time to read: 4 minutes

As a professional and experienced copywriter, AI and how it will come to influence humanity has been the cause of much recent existential dread for Anthony McNamara, content creator at The Comms Crowd. In this post he looks at the risks and benefits of ChatGPT and what it is really in store for us.

As a professional and experienced copywriter, AI and how it will come to influence humanity has been the cause of much recent existential dread. Admittedly, binging on every documentary and podcast the topic has to offer, all with contributions from long-time experts in the field, did little to assuage my fears.

Initially, the dread was far-reaching. The speed with which AI continues to develop is raising questions those in power don’t even know exist, let alone know how to answer. Approaching its adolescence, the advent of Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) – a term suspiciously innocuous – will mark the technology’s passage into maturity and the point at which our dependency on robotic intelligence will begin its final phase.

It will mark the most significant point in human history since the first homo sapiens discovered how to create fire. AGI, however, will be a blaze we could all too easily lose control over forever. Hence the recent dread.

The dread gets real

When ChatGPT trampled onto the scene like a heavily caffeinated Wildebeest in a pensioners’ yoga class, I admit to not thinking too much of it. “Another AI service that I can spend my free time interrogating on whether 4-4-2 or 4-3-3 is the more effective football formation. Big wow.”

But then I used it, and the cold beads of sweat began forming on my expansive brow.

The solution I opted for, Bearly.AI, offers a variety of ‘prompts’, one of which is called ‘Copy Wizard’ for essays, blogs, and posts. I typed in a made-up, generic title and sat back in horror as the tool generated a grammatically sound and, on the face of it, relevant 1,000-word blog.

If it was dread I was experiencing before, I wouldn’t even know what the word is to describe what I experienced at that moment.

It was a feeling that lasted for weeks. The gig is up. Time to start thinking about re-training.

The importance of knowing your enemy

Having sought reassurance from a selection of family members, friends, and colleagues, I unearthed my resolve. I love my job, and I’m not losing it to a set of cocky algorithms.

It was time for me to step into the ring with ChatGPT, and we were going bare knuckle.

Instead of using some generic blog title, I re-engaged Bearly.AI and typed in the title of an actual blog a real client had asked me to write. The blog outline immediately separated into different sections and looked depressingly appropriate. Next, I clicked the ‘Generate Copy’ button, and within around 30 seconds, the full blog cascaded down my screen.

But then I began reading it, and the sense of elation was almost transcendental. The blog was crap.

It was littered with repetition, from sentence openers to entire sentences. It had zero personality. And, it was laughably light on illuminating facts and figures — just crap.

Friend, not foe

With round one going emphatically to the human, I began to recalibrate my whole attitude toward ChatGPT. Its ability to produce quality content is limited, to put it politely, but it offers other functions that have since proved to be handy.

The ‘Continuation’ prompt designed to help beat writer’s block has merit, as does the ‘Executive Summary’ and ‘Counter Argument’ prompts. In fact, it turns out that learning how to construct the best prompts is arguably the most important skill you can acquire when using ChatGPT-enabled tools.

True though this may be, even with the most ChatGPT-friendly prompts inputted, the resultant copy is not what any self-respecting copywriter or organisation would ever think to submit, much less, publish. But it can give a decent starting point, a handy blueprint for something a competent human can radically improve upon.

In other words, ChatGPT can be thought of as a promising work-experience student approaching their employer and saying, “Hi, I’ve done this for you to try and save you a bit of time.” And I, the employer in this dubious analogy, reply with, “Thank you. I can probably use some of this. Now you run along and finish transcribing that video for me.”

Even if ChatGPT does become a little too self-assured in the future, it faces another problem even more formidable than me.

The search engines won’t stand for it

When the likes of Google cottoned on that people were stuffing their websites with key words as a means of doping their SEO, the backlash was ruthless. Many websites were penalised so heavily with SERP (Search Engine Results Page) relegations, they never properly recovered.

Expect the same for AI content. Indeed, a raft of AI content detector tools are already sweeping the marketplace and it seems to be a matter of time before they’re integrated into search engine result generators.

The last thing any search engine provider wants is for its users to be pummelled with a load of robot content during their cyber surfing sessions.

Apart from the inevitability of this development is the delicious irony – AI saving the livelihoods of copywriters from AI. *chef’s kiss*.

ChatGPT knows its place. For now.

I don’t know what the future holds for ChatGPT. That’s the one thing that’s still quite scary – no one really does.

However, I do know that in its present form, it can’t respond to detailed briefs anything like as ably as a human copywriter. It can’t understand the unspoken reactions of clients during calls. It can’t offer original insight on any topic, question a client’s approaches or ideas, and it can’t inject personality unless it’s pretending to be someone else.

Mercifully, it also seems to understand all of this. With ChatGPT draped against the ropes, sweating and bloodied, I asked it directly if it was coming for my job.

Its response?

“As an AI language model, I don’t have the ability to predict the future. However, it’s unlikely that ChatGPT or any other AI language model will completely replace copywriters. While AI can be helpful in generating content and assisting with certain tasks, copywriting involves creativity, critical thinking, and a deep understanding of language and communication. These are skills that are difficult for AI to replicate, and human copywriters are likely to remain an important part of the industry.”

Maintain that attitude, ChatGPT, and you and I will get along just fine.

Let’s talk shop

Corporate culture: If you’re going to improve it, talk about it

Time to read: 4 minutes

Anthony McNamara, content creator at The Comms Crowd looks at why it is important for companies to talk about their corporate culture and values and why it is should be part of their communications plan.

For any business to perform at optimal levels, designated KPIs must be monitored and assessed regularly. Typically, these KPIs surround functions such as sales, technology infrastructure, PR and marketing, and client relationships.

Critical though such metrics are, they are the supporting walls and lintels of the corporate edifice, and without a solid foundation, they are liable to collapse.

Sitting beneath the processes, goals, and assets of a successful business, that foundation takes its form as the corporate culture. Often neglected in favour of more short-term pursuits, developing a strong, inclusive, and supportive culture is the key to unlocking maximum potential.

However, simply embedding such a culture is not enough if you want to really reap its rewards; you have to talk about it.

In this blog, we look at the benefits of a great corporate culture, how The Comms Crowd clients have developed theirs, and how we helped them spread news of their successes to the masses.

The ‘Great Resignation’ has put corporate culture to the fore

If the development of a robust corporate culture was important before the Covid-19 pandemic, it became critical in the years that followed.

In what became known as the ‘Great Resignation’, employees voluntarily resigned from their jobs in unprecedented numbers and in the UK, between July and September 2021 alone, over 400,000 workers left their jobs.

Among the cited reasons employees gave for leaving were hostile working environments. Indeed, such was the prevalence of the reported phenomenon, that ‘toxic workplaces’ became a trending topic nationwide.

It is clear that the massive disruption of the last few years prompted fresh expectations among the workforce as to what behaviours they will and will not tolerate. A poor or neglected corporate culture may have been grudgingly endured before the 2020s commenced. But times have changed.

Quorsus, a former Comms Crowd client and strategic financial services consultancy founded just before the pandemic started and now owned by Capgemini, led discussions on the dangers of a toxic company culture and how one might be avoided. Quorsus was established with a vow that theirs would be a corporate culture imbued with positivity and reinforced by core values from the start.

Within consultancies – where your people are your product – the importance of embedding such a culture and values cannot be overstated and goes some way to explaining the extraordinary success Quorsus has enjoyed.

With our help, their approach and their message was amplified across their sector and beyond.

A robust corporate culture breeds productivity

Ask any education professional, and they will confirm that praise is essential for a child’s development. The chemical reaction experienced from being told they’ve done a great job provides an immediate boost to a child’s sense of self-worth and encourages them to continue working hard so they might experience it again.

In other words, it has the power to supercharge their productivity.

Yet, something changes when we reach adulthood and enter the world of work. It’s as though we forget those reward centres exist and how powerful they are. Consequently, praise is often replaced by criticism and our inner child – still so easily motivated by encouraging words – begins to suffocate in a miasma of ruthless expectation.

It is short-sighted, to say the least. A national Workplace Culture Survey of US employees found that 63% of respondents claim that workplace culture directly impacts their organisation’s success.

Productivity also depends on the abundance of opportunity. When a former client and friend of The Crowd dxw,  a leading employee-owned digital agency that works with the public and third sectors, launched its Returners’ Programme to help build a diverse, inclusive workforce, it broke new ground.

To ensure that dxw’s sector and potential stakeholders knew of its endeavours, the agency brought in The Comms Crowd to tell and disseminate their story. The coverage was such that dxw has become recognised as an expert provider not just of digital public services, but of opportunity to those who may have felt it had passed them by.

Together we made sure that the world knew of its leadership position in creating a positive, inclusive culture. Among various steps, this included becoming one of the first companies to introduce gender pronouns into their signatures.

dxw’s small size notwithstanding, the firm went on to win an array of company culture awards, helping to attract exceptional like-minded talent. An essential for any fast-growing technology enterprise.

Positive cultures promote development

Five years on and ‘The Great Resignation’ jolted many organisations into action because they didn’t want to lose their top talent. Recognising that avoiding high employee turnover requires more than just an amenable working environment, many firms put a renewed focus on facilitating professional development.

Ahead of any recruitment drive, senior leaders invariably begin reviewing factors such as pay scales, perks and benefits, and holidays. However attractive they’re able to make each perk, if the organisation is renowned as a place where careers stagnate, the drive is doomed to failure.

As such, building a positive culture requires embedding opportunity and routes to success at all levels of the business. The best cultures underpin this by making commitments to personal development as much as professional, properly rewarding achievements, and understanding of the importance of a healthy work/life balance.

Former client, JDX Consulting, acquired by Delta Capita, attributed their sustained global success to a carefully developed culture of inclusivity, coaching, and empowerment that allowed the firm to attract diverse, high-quality talent from all walks of life.

By entrusting The Comms Crowd with articulating and sharing their methodologies, JDX quickly became the corporate culture benchmark within their sector before their acquisition by Delta Capita.

We then went further by working with JDX to promote their Festival of Learning, a professional development programme set up by the firm’s HR division. The initiative gives employees the space and tools to grow professionally at their own pace and take control of their own career progress.

Showcase your corporate culture with The Comms Crowd

Our clients love us because we’re adept at getting their messages and successes out into the public domain and the publications their stakeholders engage with.

If you have invested time and money into developing a corporate culture that breeds energy, achievement, opportunity, and happiness, it deserves to be celebrated.

Moreover, potential talent, partners, investors, and clients want to know what you’ve done and are doing. Speak to The Comms Crowd today, and our internal comms consultant, PRs and writers can ensure they soon will.

Let’s talk shop

Content writing – a personal story of love and indignation

Time to read: 3 minutes

Our newest team member and content creator, Anthony McNamara takes a stand on writing for your audience – not the algorithms.

Most professions attract people to them for a range of reasons. Law, for example, will attract those enticed by the potential earnings as much as it will attract those with an overwhelming desire to see justice done. Providing both do their jobs well, the motivation isn’t particularly important.

However, this is where content writing is a different beast.

For the love of words

The primary motivator for pretty much all content writers (and I make this bold claim with absolutely no empirical data to back it up) is the desire to make a living doing what we love – writing.

In this, I am no different. The thrill of concocting a clever metaphor or constructing a killer closing paragraph (with just the right amount of alliteration) is palpable on those occasions I pull either off. More so when I receive an emphatic “good job” from the client.

And yet, as my years penning words for cash pass, I am increasingly motivated not only by an earnest love of writing, but by a sense of indignation. I still see so much content that has demonstrably not been written for the enjoyment and/or enlightenment of the reader and really it grinds my gears, as the kids say.

I should pause here to affirm that I am in no way taking a pot shot at my content writing kinfolk. Most of what I see that so infuriates me has either not been written by a professional content writer or has, but clearly under the duress of either stringent SEO objectives or anxious marketing managers keen for something, anything to be published.

SEO at the price of coherency

Addressing the former, though the faceless Google algorithms to which we are all beholden are allegedly becoming savvy to it, much content is still produced only with them in mind, and not the actual human beings who have to read ‘cheap, reliable laptop’ 17 times in one 400 word blog.

It’s not just SEO though. Plenty of businesses are shrewd enough to know that regular content output is a good thing, but on those occasions they have nothing much to say, force their writers to say it anyway.

For example, I once read a blog about resolving office conflicts. One piece of scholarly advice contained within was, in the event of an argument, to “walk away and count to 10”. Yes, they had re-purposed lesson one from ‘Anger Management for Toddlers’ for grown, professional adults with mortgages and NutriBullets. If I’d been so angered by this banality and the utter waste of precious seconds of my life reading it, how many others had been similarly angered? How many of those were potential customers?

It’s true that writing with the algorithms as your target audience will get you high up on the results pages. It’s equally true that regularly updated content on your website will make you appear committed and active. But if the final destination is a hastily cobbled together, anti-climactic piece, it will reflect poorly on your brand.

Of course, this should not be the sole motivation for wanting to produce great content. Motivation should also come from the fact that word will soon get around if you become a reliable repository of well-crafted insight. With the right strategy backing it up, regular quality content can elevate your brand to the position of influencer, aka Content Marketing Shangri-La.

Finding your content is one thing, enjoying the consumption of it quite another

The point I’m trying to make (and it’s a fair criticism that I’ve gone round the houses making it), is that your written content should always, always be an illuminating read. Even if it has been written with SEO in mind, or because it’s been a fortnight since your last blog, always assume that someone, somewhere will actually take the time to read it from top to bottom.

Speak to that person. Respect their intelligence and make an effort to involve them in the conversation because that’s what’s happening when they’re reading your words. If you have no new knowledge at that moment to share, revisit something old and put a fresh, entertaining spin on it. And if, for whatever reason, you’re unable to do this, pass it over to someone who can.

I’ll end this semi-rant with some advice and that is to remember the following: When a potential customer is reading your content, at that moment you are in dialogue with them. Even if indirectly, you are giving them reasons why your services and yours alone are the ones they need.

The question is, how useful are those reasons, and how well are you getting them across?